D&D General Session 0 Tips -- What are your favorite session 0 questions/activities?

[pogre]

All of my session zero is done electronically. Generally I start the game with "roll for initiative!"

 

[Guest 6801718]

I like to ask some questions to help get the players more attached to the world and their characters. I like the “how do you know each other” question so we don’t have to play out meeting. The I ask for some friends and family, both local and distant. That has the added benefit of giving me NPCs they automatically care about. I also like to ask if they have a personality quirk, like absentmindedly whistling or tapping on the table when bored. Sometimes I’ll ask for an object of sentimental value.

Oh, and if two people want to be the same class, I toss a broken pool cue into the middle of the table and let them fight it out.

 

[jayoungr]

One thing I plan to ask at my next session is "Do you want me to do the accent?"

To explain: last year, I ran the Ravenloft season of AL modules for my group. I didn't do the Barovian accent because I figured everyone in the story was speaking the same language.

However, my players have a long history with Ravenloft, and whenever they quote past games, they always do the accent. We're about to start Curse of Strahd, so if they feel like the accent would improve the experience for them, I'll do it. Even if it means pretty much all of us end up sounding like a tableful of Bela Lugosis.

 

[Oofta]

One thing I plan to ask at my next session is "Do you want me to do the accent?"

To explain: last year, I ran the Ravenloft season of AL modules for my group. I didn't do the Barovian accent because I figured everyone in the story was speaking the same language.

However, my players have a long history with Ravenloft, and whenever they quote past games, they always do the accent. We're about to start Curse of Strahd, so if they feel like the accent would improve the experience for them, I'll do it. Even if it means pretty much all of us end up sounding like a tableful of Bela Lugosis.

I gotta say ... half the reason I play D&D is so I can do funny accents.

 

[Zaukrie]

In Session 0, I take the "hook" to the adventure/campaign and have the players roleplay the story backwards of how they got to the adventure, linking themselves together to explain why they're invested in the setting and one another. If it's a campaign, I'll provide a 2-3 page guide for the setting and any changes in the rules.

.........................................

I find having players invent the story and investing in NPCs is a fantastic way to launch any adventure.

This is great. Thanks,

 

[Fenris-77]

My biggest concern in session zero is the pitch for the campaign and securing player buy in. I want to make sure they know what the plan is, what kind of game it's going to be, and any idiosyncrasies about my DM style. I always do that before character gen too. If I'm going to run urban intrigue I want the players to know that, or if the campaign is going to take place mostly in the jungles of Chult with only the occasional glimpse of civilization, I want them to know that too. If a player makes an urban focused character for a wilderness game I want want them to have done that on purpose for the fish-out-of-water thing not because they had no idea what the campaign was and now their character doesn't get to do what he does best.

One of the other important things I take care of in session zero is working with the players to see what parts of their backgrounds and story they actually want, or might want incorporated into the game, if there's an opportunity. I don't want to reference three pages of cramped hand written life story, I just want some bullet points I can crayon onto the back of my napkin next to the campaign map and some smears of yesterday's egg breakfast.

The last thing I really like to spend some time on in session zero is to talk to the players about how they see their characters, and what sorts of things they really want an opportunity to do with those characters. Sometimes that's the obvious stuff, but sometimes you get some solid gold stuff you never would have thought of otherwise.

Items two and three above are mostly about ensuring that I understand the characters my players have drawn up beyond simply looking at their stats. I find I plan and execute better that way, and least form a player enjoyment standpoint.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

I kinda want to run a session zero at one point that is basically just the group playing Microscope, because that could be fun and might add some extra player buy-in to the world.